Thank you for your questions. The reason random makes sense, and is more legitimate, is because random is not rigged. This is important for fair competition. You don’t get fairness by rigging the odds. In actuality, you properly undo it.
A fair match is one who’s odds are not fixed in advance. This is as per accepted definition. If you rig the matches, over time you’re rigging the ladder, and by proxy the entire incentives/rewards structure. You would be selling consumers a lie without full disclosure, because people naturally expect hands-off, unforced odds.
Actually it’s the opposite. Random gives you maximally consistent, unadulterated control to affect the match outcome, without algorithmic handicapping or analytical interventions. Are you better than the average for that rank? Then you stomp and win until your affectance can no longer convert. In a rigging system this progression is continuously bypassed and handicapped along the way.
Players expect “no rigging” in their gaming systems, contests, and prize machinery. It’s the standard - the deck, race, matches, etc…aren’t rigged for/against them, they’re naturally drawn from a naturally randomly shuffled deck, seeding, group.
You absolutely need a random, unrigged backdrop for your progression and skill expression to emerge. Forcing the matchmaking towards 50/50 match outcomes necessarily ruins the spirit of competition, the competitive integrity and natural contest unfoldings.
Forced 50/50 match outcomes has nothing to do with being amateur vs. professional. It has everything to do with the spirit of competition. A contest the abiding users assume is fair and free from rigging.
Which is why this thread/topic is important. It reminds users how the system is suspected and supposed to work. And clearly, they support rigging matches and building an entire ecosystem from the ground-up, around that rigging.